Jan and Dean II
Bill Long 7/8/08
One of My Favorites...from 1964
After announcing in my initial essay that one of my favorite bands/duos was Jan & Dean, I felt a little sheepish. Why? Well, I spent time over the weekend talking to a friend whose favorite artist was Don McLean, circa 1971. I went back to listen to the mesmerizing and hauntingly beautiful "Starry Starry Night" (commemorating the work of Vincent Van Gogh), and admitted to myself that the gulf between the poetry about the tortured genius Van Gogh and the little old lady in Pasadena was so wide as to be unbridgeable. That is why I am feeling abashed. Yet even as I listen, marvel and even weep at Don McLean's "Starry Starry Night," I find myself being inexorably drawn back to Brentwood and Bel Air in the early 1960s, to the culture created by Jan & Dean, along with the Beach Boys. This was a culture not simply of cutesy high school girls but, increasingly, of surf and beach, of fast cars and unexpected drivers of those cars.
Rather than trying just to appeal to the pubescent girls who thronged the theaters in the 1950s, Jan & Dean wanted to make a bid for the guys, too. And, not just for the young guys but for every older guy who longed to be young again or imagined fondly the days of his youth. With the infusion of the Beatles' influence in 1963-64, the scene definitely shifted from the Italian East Coast chiseled star to the lanky, blond, lay-back CA guys or the Liverpudlians and the long train of Britishers following them.
My "Secret" Favorite
Until Jan & Dean met the Beach Boys in a joint concert in Spring 1963, the focus of their work was on "do wop" songs and remakes of some old "classics" (such as "Heart and Soul" in 1961 or "Linda" in January 1963). But once this tie was forged, they put out a series of hits in 1963-64 that made them one of the most popular groups in America in those years. These songs were, in order, "Surf City" (a # 1 in 1963), "Honolulu Lulu" (# 10 in 1963); "Drag City" (#10 in 1963); "Deadman's Curve" (# 8 in 1964), "New Girl in School" (# 37 in 1964) and "Little Old Lady From Pasadena," (#3 in 1964). It was an impressive run. But though all these songs are wonderful, my secret favorite was also one released in 1964, which only hit the charts at # 77. Called "The Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga Sewing Circle, Book Review and Timing Association," this was surely their song with the longest title! I love it for its improbably connected themes as well as the sharp and piercing harmonic voices of Jan, Dean and their accompanists. Here is a YouTube video tribute.
The Idea of AA & C
The humorous idea is how Jan and Dean picked up on the wildly successful notion of little old ladies tearing around the San Fernando Valley in their hot rod cars and connected it both with other wild activities as well as typical "old lady" activities. A sewing circle and book review is a believable concept; old ladies get together for that, to be sure. But the notion of a "timing association" is laughable. The Southern CA Timing Association (website here) is the sanctioning body for land speed racing meets at Bonneville Salt Flats, among other places. When I was driving from Cheyenne, WY back to my home in Oregon in one day last month, I happened to stop at the rest stop on I-80 at milepost 12 in Utah. I looked north into the flat salt desert onto the Bonneville Speedway. But I didn't know, or had forgotten, that most of the attempts for new land speed records aren't made in UT anymore. The location is the Black Rock Desert in a dry lake bed in NW Nevada. So, in a fun sort of way, my listening to Jan and Dean brought me back to Utah, and then to Nevada. I relived the days when Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons were battling each other for supremacy on the salt flats, and I smiled deeply, the smile that only something positive buried deep in one's own history can evoke.
The Language of AA & C
The harmonies of this song "get me" all the time, but I also like the unlikely images of the grannies doing the following. Here is the first verse:
"They wear organdy dresses & high-button shoes
They read Playboy magazine & Hot-Rod News
There's Patience Proper & Prudence Prim
You oughta see 'em do the spin.."
I got these words off the Net, but the last word should be "swim." The "swim" was a popular and meaningless dance in the early-mid 1960s, and Jan and Dean would certainly have the grannies excelling at this. Organdy is a "fine but stiff, translucent kind of muslin." We have this dreamy usage from 1988: "His song reminded me of sunlight through organdy, of a long-forgotten curtain in another bedroom window."
But then comes the fun (at least in 1964 terms!). These grandmas read both Playboy and Hot Rod News. No doubt they, like the guys the song was trying to appeal to, read Playboy for the stories!
The chorus just repeats the harmonic words "They come from Anaheim, Azusa, & Cucamonga too (for a)/ Sewing circle & book review." But then I get a great picture from the next line of the chorus:
"The little old ladies wait in wild anticipation
For the meetings of the double A-C A-S-S-N."
Rather than just being nameless and faceless "old ladies," we see them as chomping at the bit to get into the meetings, where they can sew and review books, I presume. But what do they do on the weekends and after the meetings? Well, all week long "they put up jammin' preserves" (the song sure sounds like "piano preserves")/ But on the weekend they negotiate curves."
After the wild anticipation is over and they meet, they depart. But, how do they depart?
"The meeting breaks up with a thunderous roar
Then there's a mad mad rush for the big old door
They run to their cars like the start at LeMond's
They make the spin donuts in their lawns."
Again, the words need a little refining. The actual words in the song are "old oak door," "start of Lemans" and "make spinning donuts." But, they are on the move! Those grannies, who waited in such wild anticipation for the sewing circle, now can get out and do what every good granny should do--tear around Los Angeles in her Grand Prix with its bucket seats.
Conclusion
Pure entertainment. Absolutely worthless. But I love it. I think that if we are honest with ourselves, we might all admit to loving some things that have absolutely no "value." Maybe it is the things without value, or without measurable worth, that will actually save us...
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